Quick Service in 2060

The economic roller coaster of the last 18 months reminded every brand in quick service that survival is not guaranteed, and QSR is taking this new thinking as an opportunity to look at life after the recession—way after.

Read More About

Recommended For You

Advertising Age recently ran a hilarious peek into the future called “The Most Influential Brands of 2090,” which you can read here. This got us thinking about the future of quick service and what brands in the industry might be dominant 50 years from now. With a nod to Michael Crichton’s novel Timeline for the opening conceit, here is the tongue-in-cheek guess of Greg Sanders, QSR’s associate publisher…

Here in the year 2060, researchers at CalTech have finally developed what physicists have been striving after for decades: the quantum computer. If the predictions about its capabilities are true, it’s not tough to imagine a scenario in which there are no more restaurants.

They tell us the quantum computer is powerful enough to encode the data that makes up a solid object and transport it elsewhere. (If you’re familiar with the long-defunct technology of faxing, it’s much like that.) That solid object could easily be a hamburger or pizza, and where will that leave us? Within a few years, it is entirely possible there will be no restaurants, just a Central Menu Licensing Agency, where consumers can order an entrée from one “supplier,” a side from another, a drink from a third, and a dessert from a fourth, all transmitted instantly to the consumer's location.

The industry will adapt in some fashion, but it’s impossible to predict the future. And so, as we face the uncertainty of that future, we felt it appropriate to celebrate the eight strongest restaurant brands of today.

The Little Green Man

In the mid-2030s, NASA began launching successful manned flights to Mars. The red planet was found to be habitable by humans, and by 2052 the space agency had constructed several small cities that were populated by people who really did want to get away from it all. These Marsians (who did not care for the spelling “Martian”) were very much into individuality, and not surprisingly, a serious entrepreneurial culture developed.

The concept was an immediate hit and is credited for launching the now-crowded space-casual segment.

One of the enterprises that emerged was a restaurant known as the Red Rock Café, which opened its first unit in Alpha Quadrant One and spread rapidly to the other three cities on the planet. Frustrated when there was nowhere else to expand on Mars, the founder exported his concept back to Earth, changing the name to The Little Green Man as a tongue-in-cheek poke at the old-fashioned notion of what space-dwellers might look like.

The concept was an immediate hit and is credited for launching the now-crowded space-casual (or “cosmic-casual,” as some industry wags prefer to call it) segment.

KFC

What foresight did KFC show when, 73 years ago, it became the first quick serve to open a location in China? Or, for that matter, when it opened its first unit in India? Did the brand’s strategic thinkers know just how important those markets would become? Either way, by the time China surpassed the U.S. as the country with the highest gross domestic product, and India surpassed China as the most populous nation in the world, KFC was so deeply entrenched in those countries that it held an insurmountable lead over other competitors, both foreign and native. Today there are as many KFC units in those two countries combined as there are in the U.S.

Pollan’s

In 2010, back when homes were still equipped with kitchens, a popular and well-respected food-reform advocate named Michael Pollan said he hoped people would be cooking at home more in 50 years. I know, I know. The idea that people would be cooking at home at all sounds outlandish today. But you have to understand there was a time when it was, in fact, common for people to do so, although you have to go back more than 100 years to get there. It was already much less common when Pollan made his wish.

Back then he was trying to encourage people to stop eating so-called processed corporate food and return to the habit of cooking with “real” ingredients. The movement fizzled out within a few years, and in 2025 a group of aging food activists essentially adopted an if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them mentality. They opened a restaurant called The Family Dinner that capitalized on the distant memory of meals served to family members on something called a dining room table. Nostalgia sells, and after rebranding to honor their hero, the founders grew the concept like crazy.

Chick-fil-A

Believe it or not, the dominant mode of personal transportation used to be a land-based vehicle known as the automobile, or car. These devices rolled along on rubber-based wheels controlled by a steering mechanism operated by a driver. Weird, right? The idea of being bound to the ground in daily travels is so quaint.

One thing that hasn’t changed much, though, is the amount of time people spend in their personal transportation devices—and the role quick serves play in delivering food to the PTD. Chick-fil-A has been a master of the move-thru experience for more than 50 years, dating back to the time when the move thru was known as the drive thru. As personal transportation has evolved from those olden vehicles to radar-equipped, accident-free cars and now to today’s hovercraft, Chick-fil-A stays true to its operational focus and successfully maintains its tight control over the move-thru experience.